Mar 27, 2006

Poverty

Poverty is a core subject in understanding the world and I have a different perception. Fighting poverty can be hurtful.

Good hearted people are often moved by the issue of poverty and if they can't find it in their neighborhood they will scour the world to find it and try to cure or alleviate it.

I find few subjects with the emotional....

I find few subjects with the emotional potence of poverty. While it
doesn't work as much of a political issue in America, claiming millions
go to bed hungry every night, doesn't seem to ruffle any feathers. Yet
the deeply imbedded religious teachings that require attention to the
poor is a powerful force for many and a subject of uneasiness for the
rest. It remains a rite of passage for many wealthy children to serve
the poor before going on to their upwardly mobile life.

First and least importantly we can look at the statistics. The
government poverty measure is farcical. It is a fixed percentage of
the population regardless of any reality and doesn't change from a
period where many homes didn't have running water and bathrooms to a
period when nearly everyone has them and also color television and
air-conditioning. Farcical because it is a truism, like saying half of
all people are below average (in intelligence, musical skill, sports
ability, eyesight....etc).

The best estimate of poverty in America, using the U.S. government
dollars of income measurement is that less than 6% of families fall
into this definition. Since my estimate of the size of the underclass,
the people who are deliberately outside our society, in jail and
prison, is about half that number, I don't find it to be a high
percentage, especially given the technical problem of counting people
on the move and falling into categories that are statistical
aberrations (drug dealers, illegals, people who live entirely on cash
or off the grid).

Second and most importantly I have two experiences that give me a
different perspective. I have been committed to simple living for most
of my life. I know that I can live, and have lived, on a very low
income for a long time. The word poverty is meaningless to me when
connected to any income level. Poverty is not income related it is
context related. Some people are happy with their art, their studies,
their lives regardless of income, others are not ever satisfied, much
less happy, regardless of income. Most of the time, the ones who want
more income are right, their lives are not meaningful without money
(and not meaningful with money).

I also spent three years building and operating a park in San Francisco
on 6th and Minna St. for people who were, at the time, called Street
People. By the time the park closed in 1981 the term Homeless had
migrated from New York and replaced the term Street People.

I knew hundreds of street people, many of them on a first name personal
basis, they knew me too. This group included many people who were
heavy drinkers and winos, a few dangerous heroin addicts and several
who regularly forgot to take their meds. What characterized this
population, probably a good cross section of the American underclass is
that they were under constant, unrelenting, incessant pressure to
become part of society. Every day and in nearly every encounter with
the normal world they were prodded to get sober, get a home, get a job,
get straightened out.

Society simply never accepted their voluntary outcast status. They were
under merciless pressure to fit in to normative society and they sure
as hell didn't want to. They formed a strong community with enviable
interpersonal bonds. They helped each other, they took care of each
other in the most humane compassionate ways.

What they wanted was to be left alone, to be with their friends and to be safe.

We, the do-gooders who are driven by a passionate desire to eradicate
poverty, have made their lives more difficult. We don't give them a
place to sit, cook, sleep outside, wash, store their belongings and be
in a city with its cornucopia of food and services. We keep moving
them along, trying to fix them. We are merciless in our middleclass
values, not merciful.

The park, which was merely a safe, clean place for Street People to
hang out, was loved my many and hated by even more. It was closed down
by the overwhelming and powerful forces of Protestant self-righteous
desire to reform the sinners.
So, from my experience, the word poverty is a loaded gun, demanding
mercy from us but enforcing the demands of incessant social improvement
on people who rarely want it.

Please, in response to this blog, don’t write about the poor people all
over the world. I have worked in development in West Africa and all
over India. I know those issues and if I get the nerve, (to offend
nearly everyone) I’ll write about the third world some other time on
this blog.